


Gifts from the Zee

by spiderstanspiderstan



Category: Fallen London | Echo Bazaar, Sunless Sea
Genre: F/F, POV Second Person, ambiguous character apperance, mushy gushy romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-19
Updated: 2018-02-19
Packaged: 2019-03-14 10:45:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13588434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spiderstanspiderstan/pseuds/spiderstanspiderstan
Summary: A Londoner falls for a Zee-Captain.





	Gifts from the Zee

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Snickfic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Snickfic/gifts).



You meet her in a tavern. You are not unused to sailors; it’s one of the perks of living near the docks. They come and go in terrified, tattooed droves. 

“Could I buy you a drink?” She’s holding her own. It’s purple, and gelatinous, and appears to be climbing the walls of the glass. She’s clearly a lady of finer tastes. 

You agree, perhaps because of the alluring glint in her eye, or perhaps out of simple boredom. By the end of the night, she has slurred into your ear that she’s a Zee-captain, and the brush of her lips— colder than your skin, fascinatingly so— has planted the seed of seduction. 

You exchange tokens. The locket you offer seems almost inadequate— too ordinary, too mundane for her. She gives you a trinket made of whalebone, carved and creamy white, and words of parting. 

“To remember me by.”

* * *

 

And remember you do. You wait at the dockside when she is scheduled to return, gathering your skirts to avoid the dirty ground. It is late evening; there is a chill in the air, and the work of the day is winding down, the beat of labour slowing. Soon, there will be nearly nobody here- but the night will awake; those who shy from full-power gas lamps, and busy crowds. There will be shifts in the rhythms of footsteps, in the ways that people breathe. 

And she will be here. 

She leads her zailors off her ship, her eyes darting across the crowded docks. When she sees you, she waves, a grin snaking across her face and threatening to split it. She’s grimy from the voyage, smells of sweat and salt and exploded engines, but she is still every bit her beautiful self. 

You are greeted with the swooping headiness of a kiss. 

“I know you write poems,” the words ghost across your lips; you don’t want to pass up on existence in her arms for mere conversation. She pulls a small glass bottle from her pocket. In it, something gleams. “So I brought you some ink.”

You recognise it immediately, and wonder a little what you’ve gotten yourself into. Violant ink is ink with meaning and mind; something written in violant ink can never be forgotten. Your poetry, you decide, is not quite worth wasting it. 

Instead, you buy canvas, because your sketchbook couldn’t take the weight. 

In the few days she is in London, on solid ground, you paint her. You carve her image into the fibers, with greater care than you’ve ever taken on a peice. She is rendered in shimmering violant, each arc of her body, each tooth in her face-filling smile. 

Even if this ends— which you desperately hope it will not- the memory will be necessary. Never in your life do you want to forget her. 

* * *

 

It is midsummer, on the surface. Here, that means little. There is more stuffiness in the air. The temperature has increased by perhaps half a degree, but heat here bubbles up from something deep in the earth; it does not come from above.  

At the docks, this time, your sweetheart is waiting. She has arrived early- the gas-lamps have been lit, but are yet to be turned fully on. There is no real sense of seasons, but people learnt quickly to maintain the illusion of a world with days. 

It feels like eons since you last saw her. You have been waiting, living, reading her letters and writing her poems. You have enough friends that you haven’t been lonely, but you have been chaste. 

Longing for her pulls you in like the force of a magnet, like the draw of a curse. 

She presses something into your hands, and you feel its smooth bumps— when your fingers part, you stare down at the scintillack. It is an inky, rich blue and freckled with shimmering specks of silver; when you tilt it, they catch the light, and glow like false-stars. 

You thank her with a kiss, then struggle to break the contact— she grins devilishly, then returns it, her skittering fingers toying with your hair. You desire her, overwhelmingly. The image of her bare body dominates your thoughts— you are consumed by the sense-memory of her, the feeling of your nakedness against hers, overlapping with the reality of her before you. 

It is not long, before you have abandoned the necklace on your bedside table. 

Your bodies join— her lips on your face and neck and collarbones, brushing fingers, your breasts pressed against her back— and she becomes your world. 

You leave eachother satisfied, with the promise to write, after languid hours together in bed, in glowing aftermaths.  The first letter arrived by zee-bat, mere hours after she left port. 

  
  


* * *

 

You have been receiving her letters for months, now. She sends one from every port she visits, and the ports she visits are numerous. Her writing is sloppier than yours— it speaks of an education cut short, a hand unused to all this time forming words— but you find the misspellings endearing. 

For once, you have an interesting letter to send in return. 

You are carrying her child. They will be born soon, this tiny, perfect person you have made. You are overwhelmed, constantly, with feeling, and it spills into your writing— can they take her name? When can she be back? When can she meet them? 

The day you see her again, it is with the child in your arms— a perfect hybrid of the two of you, with her eyes and boldness already vividly there. It is the only time you ever see her weep. She takes the bundled child, her eyes gleaming with tears. You have never seen her smile so broad, nor seen her so utterly soft and tender. 

It is hours before she remembers her gift for you. The object is white, strangely warm— you recognise the spongeform pattern of bone— and carries the sort of repulsive curios that is valuable in rarity, rather than pleasantry. It is quickly forgotten on one of the shelves, because there is the baby to attend to.

Eventually, you watch them fall into a doze— your child on your sweetheart’s chest, taking tiny, shuffling breaths— and realise that you have never loved like this. Adoration blooms in your breast, warm and all-consuming. You’re staggered by it— before her, you never could have fathomed feeling with such depth and intensity.

* * *

 

“I've been working on something,” she says, after endless cycles of letters and dockside kisses and tearful goodbyes. 

You’ve both been sending other letters— to your child, who has long since left for sea. They write of horrors and wonders alike, the expansive darkness, and their nightmares. Nightmares of a vast eye.

“Is it a surprise?” you graze her neck with your lips, intertwine your fingers with as many of hers as you can hold. 

“If you want to know,” she whispers, close and conspiratorial. “You must come to sea with me.” 

And you do. With her there, even the black depths of the Unterzee feel safe. The rocking of the boat becomes soothing, rather than startling, once you have found your sea-legs, and you acclimatise to the sound of cannon-fire. 

The journey is a long one. Her ship chugs infinitely eastward from London, stopping only for fuel and food. Her menagerie of oddball officers become close friends. The ship necessitates close quarters, and you take advantage of it— you avoid the hard benches with the buffer of her lap; you stay warm at night by entangling your limbs with hers, claim it a necessity of her narrow bunk. 

You see port after port, some on foot, and some only from the ship’s rail, where it is safe for you. Some— like flourishing-of-years, on Visage— require masks or special dress. 

It is hot when you reach your final port. Your wife opens a dull wooden chest in the corner of her cabin, and draws out something adjacent to silk. 

The weave is tight, an impenetrable barrier of threads. There are shifts and gloves and long-veiled hats, all in the closest approximation to white in the Neath. When you emerge onto the dock, looking caught between a bride and beekeeper, you are stepping into sunlight. 

“Oh…” you can’t hold back the exclamation. Your skin is shockingly, gloriously warmed beneath the loose cloth. 

There is nothing in the world like this. The unterzee looks  _ aquamarine _ ; a white expanse of sand stretches inwards from the shore, and a patch of lush forest erupts upwards from the centre of the island, like some great, green geyser. Even through the fuzz of your visor, you are enthralled by it. You let white, sun-warmed sand slip through your fingers, fine as sugar, and have to pause to simply stare. 

When she kisses you, you both are left with scorch marks. Bricklike brownish-red, cutting across the unprotected space where you lifted your veils to reach one and other. Her skin is already warm with the light; she coaxes you quickly towards the jungle, and in to a low bungalow, where the two of you are protected by the shaded windows. 

It is an oasis of your native darkness, and you hope you never have to leave.

**Author's Note:**

> follow me on my new fic tumblr [here!](http://na-no-why-mo.tumblr.com)


End file.
